When researchers visit the circular business cluster, conditions are created for things to happen

PlantLink visited Bjuv to get to know the circular business cluster on and around the Industrial park FoodHills Fastigheter.

PlantLink is a research network platform for plant and food science in Southern Sweden. It was formed in 2011 as an alliance between Lund University (LU) and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Alnarp (SLU Alnarp) with initial support from the Skåne Regional Council (Region Skåne). The ambition is to strengthen the region’s plant and food science network by stimulating, uniting and promoting agro-food systems research. We aim to support education and innovation while bridging the gap between academia, industry and the general public. Through cooperation with Copenhagen University, PlantLink aspires to strengthen plant research in the Greater Copenhagen region.

The municipality of Bjuv is one of several partners in an ERDF project that will investigate opportunities to establish and develop Circular Development Hubs for the food sector in Skåne. In Bjuv, we aim to further develop facilities and infrastructure for Test Beds and associated R&D and Training within the food sector and the agricultural industry.

The business cluster in and around Bjuv is linked to the food chain in some form. For a long time, 15-20 years, an infrastructure has been developed that promotes collaboration and the exchange of resources and skills. Today this is called industrial symbiosis or circular bioeconomy. The infrastructure that enables the exchange of residual and by-flows between the industrial production plant, treatment plant and biogas plant was cutting edge when it was built 15 years ago and is still today something that many strive for. In Bjuv, the companies have not been satisfied with that, but have concluded that it is simply not good enough, but can be further developed, and today protein is extracted from residual flows before it becomes a substrate for digestion, and biofertilizer from biogas production is further processed into a more sustainable and adapted high-quality climate-smart fertilizer for agriculture.
For that reason, Ekobalans and LyRos were on site and presented their operations and innovative solutions.

In Bjuv you get to experience the future of climate-smart agriculture today.
Ekobalans has built a factory directly adjacent to the Biogas plant at Vrams Gunnarstorps Gods. There, biofertilizer from Biogas production is further processed, dewatered and phosphorus and nitrogen are extracted as dry matter. This can then be pelletized and replaces imported and not so climate-friendly mineral fertilizer. Vrams Gunnarstorps Gods has also built a pond of 200,000 cubic meters where the remaining nutrient-rich water from the process is collected and then pumped out onto the fields and spread with GPS-controlled driverless machines.
This is cutting edge in climat-smart agriculture today – Ekobalans and LyRos show the way.